Twitch Prime: Alternate Hypothesis

I proposed yesterday that Twitch Prime is an amazing move by Amazon to help turn streamers into salespeople for Amazon Prime. Clearly, people love the new program and perks – it is showing up all over twitch in channels I follow. For example –

Twitch Prime Sign-up banner for The Attack

If you want to hear 10 minutes of Amazon love, here’s Day9 and friends discussing Twitch Prime and how great Amazon Prime is (beyond just for the twitch offerings…). It also touches on the oh-so-important community parts of twitch and subscriptions.

Even when streamers aren’t giving direct calls to action to join Amazon Prime, they can’t resist discussing the other positives to Prime. Day9 is a big enough deal in the streaming world that he’s heard from many other subscribers and raises a couple of interesting points based on what he’d heard –

Some streamers reported their subscribers quadrupling over the weekend when TwitchPrime was announced.

Instead of hanging out watching for 6 months before becoming a subscriber, with Prime they’re more likely to dive right in a to test the community waters.

The first subscription is the highest hurdle – so the motivation may be to drive those incremental subscriptions as people are more likely to make a subsequent full-cost subscription.

That last point could serve as an alternate (or additional) motivation for Twitch Prime. Tomorrow, I’ll explore how these hypothesis could be tested.